Never been a sinner I never sinnedI got a friend in JesusSo you know that when I dieHe’s gonna set me up withThe spirit in the sky

*

It is January 28th 1994. Jenny and I are sitting in the front row of the back section of the Empire Leicester Square, reserved for the red carpet people for this Premiere of the film Wayne’s World 2. All our guests are sitting in the front section.

I had shot the movie a few months earlier in Los Angeles. At one point I’d been walking back to my trailer in full make-up and rig – quite a few hundred yards across the Festival site – and the producer, Lorne Michaels was walking toward me. We both stopped to say hi, and after exchanging niceties I asked him if my name could be on the poster, since I’d never had my name on a poster before. He agreed that it could. Just like that. And it was, which later annoyed Julie Burchill so much that she mentioned it in fury in one of her rants. Haha. It was exciting for me for the film to open so quickly, but my split life in California and London meant that I had no strategy to deal with the opening except to just turn up and enjoy it. Looking back it now appears that this was a golden springboard that could (should?) have launched me onto another level, but I think that a) I thought that I was already on that level and b) I didn’t really strategise my work in those days. I’ve never enjoyed publicity, PR, Q&A, EPK, red carpet, all that. It’s like a completely different job to the one I do, and frankly I’m just not very good at it. I should just try acting (dear blanche) probably. But oftentimes I am number five or six on the cast list, which is just below where the important people are, and being overlooked has become part of my brief when films are publicised. Which funnily enough I got used to. Below the radar. Not recognised when out and about. And so on, and so forth. But we’d had a little red carpet stuff, not much because there was Mike Myers, Jerry Hall, Catherine Zeta-Jones and people like that at the Premiere and that’s how it always goes. So Jenny and I went into the foyer and were ushered into a wee room where we could sup champagne briefly before being taken in to our seats. It was a huge thrill to be sure. The lights started to dim – or did they? That moment in the cinema where you feel the light fading, and it doesn’t. My agent Michael Foster was sitting in front of us and he turned around and his eyebrows were working overtime because..

Then Paul&Linda McCartney walked in and the whole place went apeshit. People stood, cheered and whooped, rushed them, got held back by security. Paul and Linda were shown to their seats NEXT TO US, and Paul turned to security and indicated that he would sign autographs for a few minutes, a kind of “let them through” moment. And through they came, shaking hands, whooping, crying… and Linda started whooping herself, joining in, so did Paul “WOOOO” they said enjoying the fuss and attention, apparently. People shook their hands, had things signed, took pictures (with real cameras – it’s 1994), and eventually security put an end to all the activities and got everyone back to their seats. At which point Paul turned to us and they introduced himself : “Hi I’m Paul, this is Linda“. No shit sherlock I thought but said: “Hi Paul, I’m Ralph this is Jenny“. All done, now the lights went down for real and the film started. Jenny and Linda shared popcorn. It was one of those nights.

Wow right. This was the man I had idolised since I was a boy. I was now 37 years old. I couldn’t quite take it all in but didn’t have to because now there was a film to watch. Watching myself acting has become harder and harder for me over the years – and recently next-to-impossible. I can’t explain it fully, except to say that I feel increasingly vulnerable, increasingly exposed & revealed as the years go by. But in 1994 I didn’t have much of a problem with it to be honest. Also – the character I was playing in Wayne’s World 2 – roadie Del Preston – was such a world away from me that I didn’t feel that exposed. I think I became an actor to escape myself, and these kinds of parts have always been my favourite as a result. The character was firmly based on Danny The Dealer from Withnail and I, shot almost ten years earlier in England and written about in My Pop Life #128 . Long hair, tattoos, a slurred, brain-bombed voice, spouting curious drug-addled philosophy based on years of experience “on the road” with various “bands” so that the character had become a virtual stereotype of the vintage rock’n’roll hippy roadie. It was a gift of a role, and in retrospect (always 20/20 hindsight) should have put me into some kind of opportunistic position. In fact, I didn’t work much in 1994. Odd.

The weird naked Indian

I enjoyed the film. It was funny. Mike Myers and Dana Carvey (who wasn’t at the London Premiere sadly) had a great onscreen schtick which had carried over from Saturday Night Live sketches – they knew these characters and what they could get away with, what their timing should be. Against them were the beautiful Tia Carrere and Kim Basinger as the unattainable girlfriends who – against all odds – fall for our heroes, and Christopher Walken as the evil biz manager who wants to steal Wayne’s girl. And me. Del Preston – the old London roadie who can help Wayne and Garth put on ‘Waynestock‘, a pop festival in their home town of Aurora, Illinois. And a plethora, a gamut, a menagerie, a rogue’s gallery indeed of characters, comedians, jokers, ne-er-do-wells and faces who have either disappeared entirely or become legend : Bob Odenkirk, James Hong, Lee Tergusen, Chris Farley, Charlton Heston, Harry Shearer, Jay Leno, Drew Barrymore. It was good company to be in for sure. We laughed a lot. Gags. Jokes. Laffs. Foolishness. I’ll blog the shooting of Waynestock later. For this post, I’m watching…

Chris Farley & Lee Tergusen

Then suddenly, the scene where I have to train Wayne and Garth and their buddies (including Chris Farley & Lee Tergusen) How To Be Roadies. A series of faintly comic sketches pumping tennis balls at a stage while yanking over a microphone stand, an eve-of-battle talk for morale. And over this sequence, the director Steve Surjik and producer Lorne Michaels had put this song : Spirit In The Sky by Norman Greenbaum. A classic. An evocative, original one-off, a truly great song.

Norman Greenbaum is Jewish and wrote this song – his only hit – presumably under the influence of mind-altering substances, given that it is a Christian gospel glam-rock anthem with a stunningly phased lead guitar, recorded, amazingly in 1969. Some claim it as the record that started glam rock, which was a British scene in the early 1970s and included working class geezers in lipstick and make-up stomping around on stack heels to a solid 4/4 backbeat, often with hand-claps : bands such as The Sweet, Wizzard, Slade, Mud, Suzi Quattro, Gary Glitter and David Bowie himself trod this glorious path, but some years after this single was number one pretty much everywhere. Or maybe I made that bit up.

Either way, there it was soundtracking my moment in the film. I felt strangely moved at this point. Like this really was a personal soundtrack for that character, and that situation. I wonder now what other songs they tried out for that bit?

Tia Carrere & Christopher Walken

After the film Paul & Linda were hustled away as the credits rolled, and the rest of us had cars to take us to the Hard Rock Cafe on Hyde Park Corner, straight down Piccadilly. Somehow we got squeezed into a vehicle with a tall Texan model who used to go out with Bryan Ferry before she ditched him for Mick Jagger. Let’s Stick Together indeed.

At the Hard Rock we were inside the roped VIP section (was there another section in fact?) and we had sixteen guests with us – I’d asked for a generous handful of tickets for the film and the party and got them. Who was there with us that night ? I remember Paul and Colin Chapman, Jo Martin and Michael Rose. Roger Griffith and Jo Melville. Beverley and Paulette Randall. Danny Webb & Leila Bertrand. Eamonn Walker & Sandra Kane. Mandy and Lucy Jules, Jenny’s sisters. And Michael Buffong. A good gang. We spread out and hunted food and drink in packs. I’d like to say that all the food was vegetarian, at the request of Linda McCartney and Paul, but I can’t actually remember that detail. We sat with them and they were lovely – Mike Myers and miserable unfriendly Paul Merton also joined. Linda was very sweet and kind and very strongly vegetarian, very important to her indeed. Macca was light and funny and generous. The reason for them being there was this : Myers had designated the chosen charity of the Premiere to be Paul’s newly opened Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts or LIPA, on the site of his old school near the Cathedral off Hope Street in Liverpool. I offered to do some free workshops there, but when I contacted them later that month the first question was “Please send us your C.V.” I did but nothing.

Del Preston

As for the party. It’s all a little blurry now. It probably was then too. Those were the days of smoking indoors. My highlight reel would have to include the following clip : after Paul and Linda moved on to another table of their friends, Naomi Campbell slid in beside me (I was bleached blond that night, and she’d recently shown a preference for that look and had an affair with the U2 bass player,) and we chatted for a while, someone took a photograph which is framed and in storage, so sorry not for the blog today, and then Jo Martin the flame-breathing goddess of Hackney introduced herself to Naomi with “Hello, I’m Jo, a friend of Ralph’s WIFE“. Not before I’d given NC my phone number, but alas it never rang. In the photo of Naomi and I you can see Jo and Leila behind us looking daggers…

Chrissie Hynde (for yes, it was she…) winking at me as I walked downstairs looking for the toilets. Good friends of Linda.

Michael Rose (who then played in a great band called The April Place) saying “Ralph, c’mon, I have to speak to Paul NOW!” So we joined his table and Paul and Michael and I chatted about Fool On The Hill & Pet Sounds and Paul passed me a spliff he was smoking and I inhaled and Everything Was Fine With The Earth And All That Was On It. And kind of has been ever since to be honest. A moment. Childish but true. Later the party started to wind down – at which point I noticed that Jaye Davidson was there – friends with Naomi – who I’d worked with a few years earlier on The Crying Game. He was drunk. So was I.

There’s another fabulous picture of Macca and I talking to each other as the party starts to move out (it’s in storage). TRAMP was the word being passed around. A nightclub on St James St. “We used to go there in the old days, me and the boys,” said Paul confidentially to me “after a show or whatever, to pick up birds“. He winked. “Mind you, see her over there?” he nodded toward Linda who was talking to someone else, “She gave me the glad eye earlier. Think I might be in there.” He enjoyed this joke very much, one he must have told a hundred times in similar circumstances, surrounded by adoring fans and ‘birds’ and seeking out the eyes of his beloved.

I asked him how – after years of this public adoration that we’d seen a glimpse of inside the cinema – the screaming fans, the crowds, the adulation – how he’d handled it all this time, and how gracious they’d both been about it. He looked around and whispered “In the car on the way up from Sussex : we get really stoned.” Of course. “You coming to Tramp then?“

Drunken moments – watching Roger grabbing Naomi’s leather-clad buttock in one hand as we walked out. The gang were getting taxis down Piccadilly to the club. I think everyone decided to Carry on Partying.

At Tramp, a desk, a maitre-D, a penguin looks at the large group of black people at the entrance to his club. “Can I help you?” he says, his eyes giving the opposite meaning. Yes I say, we’re with Paul & Linda and Naomi from Hard Rock, Wayne’s World blah blah fucking blah. His face is the picture of England that we know and love, drenched in miserable boarding school rainy afternoons, ranked prefects and results, furtive secret sex, jealous unattainable class status and a wilted disdain for anything foreign. He asked for my name. “Just a moment please“. He disappears downstairs to check my story. The gang behind Jenny and I are happy, glowing, full of joy, but clearly expecting the worst. Which then duly appears with Penguin and a faintly obsequious smile, pastel-coloured with supercilious hauteur : “I can let the two of you downstairs, but sorry, not the others…”

Bless the gang, they insisted to a woman that Jenny and I go into Tramp and Carry on Partying with the glamour pop model people. We didn’t. We were moving as a pack in those days. You turn my people away, we aren’t coming in. Any of us. Goodnight. All back to ours !! About ten years later, maybe twenty ? we did go into Tramp with Rula Lenska who is possibly a contemporary of Paul McCartney, and I stole an ashtray.

A series of taxis took us back to Archway Road N6 where we lived. And we laughed and drank and smoked some more. Celebrated properly together. Who were we again ? Well to honour the few : Jenny and I, newlyweds in 94. Paulette & Beverley who have appeared in My Pop Life #60 and My Pop Life #187 (among many others) and who are two of my very special friends. My brother Paul, and his man at that time Colin Chapman – who had moved down from Durham a few years earlier and who is still in our lives to this day. Indeed recently Colin it was who told me where to go to find a nice leather jacket in New York = Cast on the Lower East Side. Colin knows these things. He now does a fashion blog and is here regularly, but lives in Shoreditch with his man Dunk.

Jo Martin

Roger Griffith

Danny Webb

Michael Rose

Michael Buffong

Sandra Kane

Josephine Melville

Eamonn Walker

Paulette & Beverley Randall

Paul, Ralph & Colin Chapman in 2013

Jo Martin (who saved Naomi Campbell from a date with me) had worked with Jenny in a play at the Tricycle Theatre called Pecong – an updating of Medea to Trinidad, directed by Paulette. Eamonn was also in this production playing Jenny’s brother (My Pop Life #104). His partner Sandra now runs the cafe in Roundhill Park; when we met her she’d just come back from living in Japan. Jo Martin was going out with Michael Rose at that point, a foxy eastender who played a mean guitar and could sing too. They lived down the road from us in Holloway so time was spent there, smoking weed mainly, listening to reggae, Lenny Kravitz’ first LP, hanging out with her friend Tracey, or with Roger and Jo Melville. Roger Griffith is a wonderful actor – I had cast him as my lead in The House That Crack Built in a BBC funded workshop, the rap opera/play that was never performed, and his to-be wife Jo Melville was one of the female Possee known as The Bibi Crew. They are no longer together. Roger and Michael Buffong were both in The Possee, which I mentioned in My Pop Life #184, a big part of that early 90s London landscape. As were Danny Webb and Leila Bertrand – Danny was in Alien 3 with me in 1991 (see my Pop Life # ) and his wife Leila is a casting director : they lived downstairs from my therapist for a while (probably around this time?) in Maida Vale, and all I remember from that shoulder-rub was Leila meeting her on the stairs one afternoon after some complaints and nonsense with “Heal thyself physician!“. Funny. They have two beautiful daughters Lily & Bellaray who came to see us in Brooklyn in late 2015 with their mum, we went to Sunny’s bar in Red Hook for a bit of live bluegrass.

Jenny, Leila & Johanna at Sunny’s in Red Hook 2015

And Mandy and Lucy, ever-present sisters, confidantes and ladies-in-waiting, keepers of the secrets, queens, princesses and gold medal winners of life, love and art. They are, naturally very dear to Jenny’s heart, and mine.

Me, Mandy, Lucy

It was a great kitchen party. We smoked. We drank. We played records. Til dawn ? Dunno. Did we play Spirit In The Sky ? Maybe we did. Probably not.

Well, it is my pop life after all.

Youtube doesn’t have the roadie training section which features this song, so you’ll have to make do with this clip : Del Preston outlines his plans for the gig…

I bought the Wings LP Red Rose Speedway in the spring of 1973 because of the single My Love which had got to number one. I thought it was McCartney’s best effort since the Beatle’s split – or to be fair at least as good as Another Day from 1971. The album Red Rose Speedway was vilified and booed from the rafters. Critics scorned it. Schoolkids in the 5th year weren’t having it. Pink Floyd & Led Zeppelin had taken over. Roxy Music had arrived. David Bowie was blowing our minds. Elton John was on the Yellow Brick Road and Genesis were Selling England by the Pound. Everyone was still growing their hair. Wearing loons, stack heels, denim, embroidered shirts, tear-drop collars. Were we hippies, greasers, bikers, rude boys or what. Marvin was Getting It On and Stevie was having Innervisions – I wouldn’t hear that until the following year. The Isleys had a summer breeze on. And Hawkwind were delivering Sonic Attack (see My Pop Life #159). Confusing. Which tribe to join ? All, and none. This photo is from early ’73 :

Ralph, Andrew, Paul, Rebecca 1973

and henceforth I will use any excuse to place it into the blog. You can see the clash of fashions already. Hippie with a fringe ? Macca influenced. Hippie with a teardrop collar ?? Be your own judge. I love this picture. Happiness, innocence, time frozen in an instant. 1973 was a big year for me. I turned 16 in June. Took my first LSD trip (see My Pop Life #133), lost my virginity, joined a band (see My Pop Life #80). But I didn’t join the army, get married or go to prison. My uneventful pop life.

Paul McCartney has always made me feel comfort, happiness, sweet feelings, those fleeting safe feelings that major chords and harmonies can bring. This LP has no edges of any kind. I think the harshest moment is on the song Single Pigeon when Paul sings

“did she throw you out? Sunday morning fight about Saturday night”

Which is entirely not harsh in any way. Otherwise my loves, it’s My Love, Lazy Dynamite, One More Kiss, Hold Me Tight, Hands Of Love and probably my favourite Wings song Little Lamb Dragonfly. I should have chosen it as the song, but it’s not as good as My Love. It’s a little indulgent, a little long, and little soft and gentle. That’s why I love it. This LP is like a big barn bed covered in a warm blanket with a log fire, a view of the valley and warm slippers with a cat or three lying around. And what’s wrong with that ? I’d like to know. Cos here I go again…

Denny Seiwell, Linda McCartney, Paul, Denny Laine, Henry McCulloch

McCartney was always derided by groovers for being too pop. Too soppy. Too lovey dovey. “Lennon gave him the edge” is the concept. Together they were great, they lifted each other to higher standards, pushed each other and then when they split and wrote as solo artists, apart, well we all moved on didn’t we ? Nothing to see here. It’s like a permanent talent show with judges stroking their chins, thumbs down for that, naaah mate.

But you miss so much music that way. Let it be. Let him be. After the Ram LP, which critics hated, Paul and Linda made two edgy singles that were both banned : Give Ireland Back To The Irish which was a political response to Bloody Sunday and which was referred to on the chart countdown (#16) as “a song by Wings“, and in December ’72 the raunchy sex’n’drugs boogie Hi Hi Hi which contained the line

“gonna make you lie on the bed get you ready for my body gun“

except that Paul always insisted, and still does, that the lyrics actually say “polygon” but such was the BBC in 1972. The song also certainly claims that he is

“going to do you, do it to you sweet banana, like you’ve never been done…. ”

Whatever that means. The B-side C Moon got the radio airplay.

I love this early period Wings/McCartney stuff. They were having fun. I love that the band were named after the difficult birth of Stella, Linda and Paul’s 2nd child, which was touch and go at the time and a worried Paul had visions of angels protecting his child, and Wings came from that moment of panic, faith and trust. I love that they toured England in the spring of 1972 without a tour being booked, they drove up the motorway in a van and phoned Nottingham Students Union and said “can we play there tonight?” This was repeated up and down the country. Great scenes. Didn’t play any Beatles songs. At all. But the music of this period is joyous and lovely. For example – the harmonies of Linda McCartney on Red Rose Speedway are a wonder on almost every song – not the expected thirds and fifths but way more adventurous and unexpected. Lovely. Lennon and McCartney did have this much in common as they left the greatest group of all time to strike out on their own – they didn’t want to do it on their own. Yoko and John worked together musically right up to his untimely death in 1980. She was his confidante, his editor, his collaborator. And famously, Linda joined Wings along with Denny Laine from The Moody Blues and was given a keyboard and shown middle C. And despite ridicule (from males mainly), her contributions are really excellent. Linda sings the high harmony on Let It Be by the way pop fans…

Ram is a fantastic album, credited to Paul & Linda McCartney

…while Red Rose Speedway is credited to Paul McCartney & Wings. Gentle, undemanding cosy beautiful songs from people in love. I don’t need all my music to thrust and challenge and have edge. I don’t need my life to feel like that either. I play it all the time.

My Love starts with a long sustained A natural, then ‘falls’ into a Bb major seventh chord for the opening line

“and when I go away I know my heart will stay with my love”

which musicians will know is actually a semitone UP from A, which means that it rises, but it sounds as if it falls. How does this work ? The A is the major seventh of Bb – a favourite chord of Bacharach – but that’s the magic of music. Beautiful chords on this song. When they recorded My Love McCartney had planned to play the guitar solo after the bridge, but Henry McCulloch who’d joined Wings after playing with Joe Cocker, (and who wouldn’t turn up for the Band On The Run sessions in Lagos, Nigeria which followed this LP), insisted (as far as one can insist with a Beatle I’m imagining) that Paul allowed him to play the guitar solo. And the result is rather marvellous. In fact the production on this song is outstanding, understated horns and strings, a lovely clipped guitar, harmonies from Linda, prominent fat bass as ever on a Paul song, subtle tasteful drums. It’s a beauty. He may never have surpassed this song since 1973.

with James, Stella and Mary later in 73

I’ll find out for myself on Sunday since we have two tickets to see McCartney at Meadowlands in New Jersey. Been a long time since I saw him playing live. 1979 at Wembley. Live and Let Die was the standout that night, recorded during the Red Rose Speedway sessions but produced by George Martin – all lasers and smoke – while at the other end of the scale a solo acoustic I’ve Just Seen A Face followed by Blackbird was breathtaking. He didn’t do much Beatles in those days, still looking over his shoulder, running from his legacy, and trying to create a new one. These days he plays for three hours and crams them all in, Beatles, John songs, George songs, the lot. Can’t wait.

This is Jenny’s favourite Paul McCartney song. She thinks it matches God Only Knows and Just The Way You Are (Paul’s favourite songs that he wishes he’d written). High praise indeed ! I share a birthday with Paul McCartney. And I Love Him.